Censored In Stockton

             
For those of you that read my articles in the Pacifican(UOPs campus newspaper)
you may have noticed that last weeks bloated donkey article was lacking in
intensity and its usual sarcasm.  That was entirely out of my control; it
was the workings of censorship.  My article was manipulated and twisted
from my opinion of current events to an incoherent “debate”.  In my
opinion (notice this is my opinion) the tampering of last week’s article is
illegal.  What happened to freedom of the press?  Needless to saythis
official second article of The Bloated Donkey will focus on censorship and the
rights to express one’s own opinion be it through press, media, blogs, term
papers, etc. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of
censorship is: to
examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable.
Now you may think that I might be overreacting and that the article is
relatively similar to the original (for those of you that have read the
original).  However, the parts that were deleted and published without my
consent were the introduction, the title, and the general meaning of my article
which was hijacked and used as a debate piece. And according to Merriam-Webster
Dictionary anything that is deleted or suppressed because it is deemed
objectionable is the definition of censorship. So even though only my
introduction and title were deleted and my article that was turned into a
debate piece, that falls under the dictionary definition of censorship.
 Supposedly the United States has freedom from censorship especially in
the areas of the press, and freedom of speech. For those of you that are
savvy with your court case history you may reference the cases of Hazelwood
School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988), and Hosty vs. Carter (2005), these court
cases essentially gave school administrators the right to censor university and
public school newspapers. However there has been a recent overturn in the
previous decisions of Hazelwood and Hosty. The ruling for the Chicago State
University tempo court case was for the states to extend the protections of the
first amendment (freedom of speech, press, etc.) to University and collegiate
press.  So the rights of the first amendment should be extended to me as
well.  My opinion no matter how intense should not be tampered with, I am
entitled to my opinions and to publish those opinions if I so choose. Now that
I am done venting, let us segue into a more salient issue, the “end” of the
recession.  The National Bureau of Economic Research recently came
out  claiming that the recession that has plagued this nation for 18
months is over. In my opinion this doesn’t make sense.  Who is this
recession over for? The recession is certainly not over for those who remain
unemployed, or for those that continue to lose their homes and money due to a
recession that supposedly has ended. How can these economistsmake such claims? What
statistics are they analyzing? According to the Bureau of labor Statistics as
of June 2010 California unemployment is higher than ever reaching historically
high levels of 12.3%. In every state according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics unemployment has reached historically high levels.  How can you
tell the 12.3% of unemployed Californians struggling to make ends meet and
provide for their families that the recession is technically over.  So far
I have not found one tangible piece of information that tells me that this
recession is over, there is actually more information telling me that this
recession has a just begun.  My prediction is that while government
officials and economists claim that this recession is over a second more
damaging recession is imminent.  I believe that the banks are sitting on
thousands of foreclosed homes that have not been released and once they are
released this will once again devastate the real estate market.  The banks
are accumulating mass amounts of foreclosed homes that they have not yet put on
the market.  According to RealtyTrac as of 2009 the number of foreclosures
reached 250,054 in California alone.  With this trend the banks will be
sitting on millions of foreclosed homes by then end of 2010, most of which are
not being put on the market.  Think about it, the banks cannot hold onto
this homes forever or make them disappear, after a while they will need to
release these homes on the market. When the mass amounts of foreclosed homes
are finally released the market will suddenly be flooded with thousands if not
millions of these homes which in turn will devastate the real estate market
creating a second deeper recession.  Having the knowledge that the banks are
sitting on these foreclosures makes me confident in saying that a deeper more

serious recession is looming.  The claim about the recession being over is
just the false calm before the storm; the worst is yet to come.  The
recession may be over for the government officials and the white house elites
however, it is not over for 12.3% of Californians and from my perspective of
how things are going and how banks are running things this is just the tip of
the iceberg.